Slowly, thoroughly, the traffic came to a stop. Cars halted mid-creep, bumpers kissing, grinding the Tullamarine on-ramp towards standstill. It spread neatly and efficiently along Bell Street, branching off in rivulets: Sydney Road, Nicholson, St Georges, High Street, blooming to the north and south in a seemingly choreographed dance of inconvenience and ire. Tram brakes groaned, peppered motionless between stops, as cars amassed along the urban vertebrae. The word went out, relayed from station to station: traffic was banked up across the tracks and all trains were to remain still until signalled otherwise. People listened to their car radios, volume up high, or streamed updates through their mobile phones. The choppers reported the same ominous message: gridlock, gridlock, as far as the eye can see, and from where their eye in the sky hovered, it was far far far indeed. On the ground, reactions varied. Some reached for mobiles, sending pre-emptive apologies for imminent tardiness. Some silenced engines, reclining their seats for the wait, weary already before the work day had begun. Others were livid, pounding their steering wheels at the very injustice of it, because it was 2016 and the future was now and how on earth could this possibly still keep happening in the modern infrastructure economy and by Christ you better believe someone would be losing votes for this. In the most northerly north, the drivers sat with practised patience amid the building blocks of their half-built estates, one road in, one road out, smug that finally others felt their pain. And in the inner north, passengers spilled from trams, their legs primed for the walking they’d always promised themselves they’d attempt, lungs opening curiously to the mid-autumnal air.
Here they are, these unremarkable strangers, caught in a moment of stasis before the everyday continues:
Evangelia Kouros sits in her car stuck in Reservoir’s High Street, her children bickering from the back seat about trivial nonsense and her head pounding with the promise of a headache. She watches a woman attempt to escape the traffic, zigzagging her little hatchback in a hundred-point turn that bumps and grazes a pole, the curb, a nearby bumper, and Evangelia mutters under her breath.
In the Clifton Hill pool, DB Arnolds swims his regular morning laps, his head in the clouds and his heart in his mouth, oblivious to both the traffic jam around him and to the ting ting ting of the increasingly frustrated texts from his increasingly frustrated wife who, with a first period year nine History class and their child still in his car seat, will twice be late this blustering leafy morning.
On the South Morang line, Aida Abedi tears a tissue into a thousand pieces somewhere between Thomastown and Lalor, anxious she will miss her appointment with her case worker and have to wait another procession of weeks for the next. Each piece forgets itself as it piles onto her lap, for she is waiting, always waiting . . .
In his boxy Thornbury apartment, the Failed Hack pulls the blanket over his head to drown out the angry horns bleating from the street outside, and turns to the wall, wide-eyed and weary from yet another night unslept.
And in a fluorescent-lit CBD office, bright-eyed and coffee-ed, Nell Swansea has missed the entire thing because she has been here since seven-thirty, tapping away at her keyboard as another day begins its crawl towards the end.
Time passes, emergency response vehicles weave towards the freeway, and the north has no choice but to wait.